


Found Love (The Most Beautiful)

by luninosity



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Adorable, Babysitting, Established Relationship, Gummi Bears, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Parenthood, Sickfic, Tea, protective!Michael, sick!James
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fic in which there is sick!James, protective!Michael, and Michael having to cope with babysitting duties, plus some dinosaurs, gummi bears, and motorcycles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found Love (The Most Beautiful)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Found love (the most beautiful) Spanish.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2339480) by [nbmcbender](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbmcbender/pseuds/nbmcbender)
  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译]Found Love (The Most Beautiful)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664470) by [Shame_i_translate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shame_i_translate/pseuds/Shame_i_translate)



> A friend requested kid!fic, and I am not a kid person, but I’ve tried! Title from The Kooks’ “Come On Down”.

Mostly, James thinks, life is spectacular.

Well, ninety-nine percent spectacular. The other one percent involves the distressing sensation that he’s about to cough up a lung, or some other vital internal organ.

He pretends, desperately, that he doesn’t need to cough. Sneezes, instead, and then shakes his head, when Michael glances at him. “Sorry!”

Michael narrows that green-grey-blue gaze like he’s unconvinced, but doesn’t say anything, just slides his large hand around the back of James’s neck. The weight feels good there. Cozy.

Actually, the entire room, and, beyond that, the whole of their flat, feels cozy as well. He knows exactly why that is, too.

The _why_ involves the inviting furniture and the dim lights and the quiet evening outside, and the left-over chicken in the refrigerator, and, more important than all of these, the small cheerful presence now struggling valiantly to stay awake, on the couch beside them, in the middle of watching _Cars_ for what has to be the hundredth time in his young life.

Michael studies Brendan’s sleepy form, over James’s head. “Can we put him in bed now?”

“No.” James knows this from experience. His son has some sort of innate superpower that will snap him back to wakefulness the second anyone tries to pick him up before the end of the movie. And none of them will be cozily happy anymore, in that scenario.

“Can I put _you_ in bed now?”

“No.”

“James, you look terrible. And you’ve been coughing all day. And sniffling when you’re not coughing. And—”

“Yes,” James mutters, “thank you, I know.” He does comprehend how unattractive he is when sick; he doesn’t need reminding. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one looks at it, he rarely gets sick, and consequently isn’t very used to dealing with illness when it happens.

Probably taking Brendan to the park, in the bitter wind and damp air of the afternoon, hadn’t been his best idea ever. But Anne-Marie had dropped their son off the evening before with a smile that said _I can’t wait to see how you two handle the next four days,_ and James had wanted to know that also, had been excited about spending the long weekend with his two favorite people in the world, and his vague forebodings of a potential cold had been far less than important.

He’d spent that day, their first day, trying to make everything utterly perfect. He’d gotten up at an unholy hour of the morning to make waffles, which everyone involved had seemed to appreciate, except maybe his own stomach, because he’d woken up listless and not hungry, and that feeling, irritatingly, hadn’t altered all day. But he’d made coffee because Michael liked that, and hot chocolate because it was an icy morning and Brendan liked _that_.

He’d noticed Michael looking at him oddly when he _didn’t_ steal a marshmallow when adding them to the latter, but he truthfully wasn’t very hungry, and the processed sugary blob just hadn’t sounded appetizing; probably should’ve been a warning about how sick he might in fact be, now that he’s thinking about it. At the time he’d just shrugged—“Not very many left; save some for tomorrow?”—and that was of course true, and Michael’d let it go.

He’d smiled at them both, when Michael and Brendan had contemplated each other with equal wariness, instinctively skeptical of the _other_ most important man in James’s life. He'd offered them each a different hand of his to hold onto, on the walk to the park.

Michael isn’t _not_ a kid person; he’s just never spent much time around them. He eyes Brendan like he’s not entirely sure whether to talk in small sentences or just act normal, and Brendan looks right back like he can sense all the awkwardness and doesn’t really feel like making the division of James’s attention any easier.

James, for his part, has just been trying to think of entertaining activities for them all, in the chill of the grey-hued day, while keeping everyone reassured that, yes, he loves them both. It’s surprisingly hard to balance everything, when all he really wants is to fall into bed and hide beneath the covers and ache in peace.

Bed sounds like such a lovely concept, right now. Bed, and sleep. Maybe he can just sleep on the couch. It’s a welcoming couch. Companionable. Perhaps it won’t care if he sneezes on it again, though he’ll try not to.

“…James?”

“What? Sorry.”

“I said, you’re falling asleep sitting up. Go to bed.”

“No.”

“Tell me the last thing that happened in the movie, then.”

Good try, but not going to work; James has seen this movie enough times by now that he _can_ answer that question in his sleep. “All the adorable Radiator Springs cars just turned up to help him win the race. It’s heartwarming and precious and shows the meaning of true friendship.”

“You know, that would’ve been a lot more convincing if you hadn’t stopped to cough in the middle of saying it.”

James starts to answer, and then finds himself coughing again, and out of breath. This time the airlessness lasts long enough for Michael to begin looking alarmed. “Hey. I was sort of joking, earlier, about you looking terrible, but I think I mean it. Stop that.”

“I could sneeze on you instead…”

“James, seriously. You never get sick. I’m kind of worried.”

“I’m—hang on, tissue, sorry—not. Like you said. I never get sick. So I’m not sick now. Because that’s what never means.”

“Not funny. Not even in the vicinity of funny.”

“Honestly,” James sighs, and curls up in the protective circle of Michael’s arm, cuddling his box of tissues defensively, “I’m okay. It’s not that bad. And we can go to bed after the movie. It’s almost over.”

Two of those sentences are true; two of them aren’t, not entirely. He really doesn’t want Michael to worry, and he genuinely doesn’t ever get sick, or doesn’t admit to being sick, anyway, but he’s starting to feel just a tiny bit concerned. He hurts everywhere, with the bone-deep weakness that promises feverishness, and his lungs and, for that matter, anything involved with his breathing, don’t seem to be working too well.

But Michael looks a little reassured by the assertion, so James doesn’t say anything. He can handle this. He’ll just put up with it for now, and all the horrible weariness’ll go away overnight, and he can be fine in the morning. Michael and Brendan need him to be fine in the morning.

The movie finishes, eventually. Nobody moves for a while, until James, half-awake, starts to sit up, and literally can’t, for a split second, because his head feels off-balance and his body is disinclined to obey his commands.

Thankfully he catches himself fast enough to turn the aborted movement into something more like an embrace, draping himself against Michael’s lean length for the support. Michael makes an amused little sound. “Feeling affectionate?”

Absolutely yes, except for how the gesture’d been inadvertent. Not that he’s going to say so. “You’re comfortable.”

“I’m not sleeping on the couch all night because you’re feeling lazy. And I’m not letting you sleep on the couch all night, either. Also—”

“All right, I know.” The second attempt goes better. Less dizzying. More successful. After he gets himself up, he manages to coax Brendan up, too, and into the guest bedroom, which currently comes complete with _Cars_ -themed flannel sheets.

Michael’d shaken his head at the suggestion of shopping—“We _have_ guest sheets! They’re blue! Is there something wrong with blue?”—but had followed him around the store bemusedly anyway, holding various cartoon-covered bedding sets with impressive patience while James made up his mind.

They might’ve ended up buying new sheets for themselves, too. And that hadn’t been James’s fault at all, especially not the part where he’d said “Oh, fantastic, these have little planets and they _glow in the dark_ , isn’t that _terrific_?” and Michael had started laughing and then wandered off and come back with adult-sized versions, miraculously, from someplace else in the store, and they’d gone home and proceeded to welcome said new sheets by having spectacular sex in the middle of glowing galaxies and every single bad celestial pun imaginable.

Michael had won that particular contest. James might never be able to hear the phrase “the Milky Way” again without snickering. Not that he minds.

That memory distracts him enough that he’s able to forget that he needs to cough until he’s made it into their bedroom, at which point his lungs figure out that he’s been walking around without their permission and decide that he shouldn’t be able to do that anymore.

Michael, of course, is right behind him, like he’s been waiting for James to fall over, and catches him and tosses him into bed before James can find enough air to protest.

And then studies him, eyebrows tucking themselves together. “You feel a little bit warm…”

“I just need to sleep.”

“Are you planning to sleep in your clothes? Come on, up…”

“I like my clothes. They’re warm and I’m cold.”

“James…”

“Oh, fine. Help me take them off, then.”

“Any other time,” Michael says, and shakes his head, “I would have you naked so fast…” But he’s careful, right now, as if he’s fearful that ungentle movements might somehow make things worse. James sighs, and lets himself be cradled by the pillows, after. They’re soft against his face. Trying to be gentle, too.

“Come here,” he says, finally, because he wants to make some comment about Michael and being naked but he’s tired and his brain isn’t working properly. It’s all he can come up with.

Michael slides into bed beside him, and James settles into those comforting arms again, and exhaustion hits him over the head and sends him into darkness almost instantly.

He wakes up because he’s very cold, and also because Michael is shaking him.

“James? James, come on, please—”

“ ’M awake…what? Are you all right? Is Brendan—”

“What? James, you’re burning up, you didn’t tell me you were this sick—”

“I’m not sick…I don’t have the time to be sick…you didn’t answer me.” The intrusive gleam of the bedroom lamp, hurriedly flipped on, throbs inside his head. He shuts his eyes against it.

“Oh for fuck’s sake—I’m fine and he’s still asleep as far as I know and you feel like you’re about to spontaneously combust or something and you’re shaking—”

“I am? Well, I am…kind of…freezing…do we have more blankets?”

“Fuck.”

“Not an answer…”

“Stay here. I’m finding you whatever we have in the flat that might help. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Fine…can I have your pillow?”

“Yes. Why?”

“It’s warm and it smells like you.”

“James…I think maybe I should take you to the hospital.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No. It’s just the flu, or something, I’m going to be miserable, but I’ll be fine. Unless I freeze to death or something, because I’m still very cold. But until that happens, no hospital, because we have Brendan for three more days and I want to be here and I’m not missing any time with the two of you.”

“Dammit, James.”

“Sorry. No.”

“…okay. Okay, I’m going to go look for drugs for you now. Whatever we have. You have to still be able to wake up when I get back, all right? And if not, hospital. I mean it.”

He wants to argue—he very much doesn’t want to have to be taken to the hospital; for one thing, that would almost certainly terrify Brendan, and for another, that’s just sad and pathetic—but Michael’s gazing at him with desperate stubbornness. And while James could try to compete in the stubbornness category, and might even win, he looks at those springtime-pale eyes and the concern there keeps him silent.

He does manage to be awake when Michael gets back, balancing aspirin and tea and a variety of cold-and-flu-related products. He’s a bit proud of himself for that victory—he wasn’t entirely certain, at one point, that he’d make it—but he can’t, obviously, admit that out loud. He’d find himself in the emergency room before he could even voice the objection.

After an indeterminate while, and Michael force-feeding him several medicinal-tasting concoctions, and a few more uncomfortable attacks of vicious coughing, he does start feeling closer to alive. Might be the drugs. Or Michael’s arms around him. Either way, promising, if somewhat hazy and disconnected from the world.

“I love you,” Michael says into his hair. “How are you?”

“Um…better. Tired.”

“You feel a little better. Not as feverish. And you’ve stopped shivering.”

“Good?”

“Yes. Good. You should probably try to sleep, if you’re tired.”

“Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“I can hear your heart beating, you know…were you worried? About me?”

“James,” Michael mutters, lips warm against the top of his head, “I _constantly_ worry about you,” and James laughs, and then yawns.

“I love you. Don’t go anywhere, please? You’re warm and you feel good and I’m going to sleep now, okay?”

“Very much okay. I love you, too. And of course I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying right here.”

He drifts off, secure, as the cool silvery pre-dawn light approaches outside. Michael will be there. And will take care of him. Michael is good at taking care of things, making plans, keeping their lives organized. One more reason James loves him, of course.

He wakes up a second time, not long enough later, to the sound of his son’s voice from the doorway. “Daddy?”

Of course that word, his son asking for anything, will always catch his attention and pull him back to wakefulness; but it’s painful.

He hears Michael say something, too quietly to hear, obviously not trying to disturb him; James sighs, inwardly, and pushes his eyes open. “Hey, kiddo. Everything all right?”

Michael, sitting on the side of the bed—and thank god they’re both wearing pajama pants, at least, unlike the first night of Brendan’s visit, when they’d forgotten and had to panickedly hide under sheets in the morning—spins around to stare at him. “You shouldn’t be awake!”

“I’m not going to not be awake for my son…What’s up?” This last question is directed at Brendan, who has clearly decided, now that his father is awake and can protect him if necessary, to venture across the room and dive into their bed. James puts an arm around him; tries not to cough, even when a tiny elbow, wriggling into place, stabs him in the ribs. Michael watches this interplay apprehensively.

“I’m hungry. And there’s a dinosaur in my room.”

James ignores Michael’s expression of _what?_ and comes up with, “Okay, well, is he a friendly dinosaur?”

“Um…he’s a tyrannosaurus rex.”

“Ah. But he hasn’t tried to eat anyone yet?”

“No. Because he’s little.”

“Oh, okay. Well, you know the thing about little tyrannosauruses…”

“Tyrannosauruses?”

“Shut it, you,” James says to Michael, and then, to his son, “…they usually don’t eat anyone first thing in the morning. In fact, they want to go to sleep in the morning. So I don’t think you have anything to worry about, as long as you stay quiet.”

Brendan considers this for a minute. “Okay. But I’m still hungry.”

James sighs. Shuts his eyes for a second, because he’s still very tired and feels more or less the same way he does after a long day of doing his own stunts, sore and bruised inside and out. “All right…I did say I’d make you pancakes today, didn’t I…”

“James, you are not going anywhere.”

“But…”

Michael looks at him, shakes his head, and then looks at Brendan. “Listen, your dad’s not feeling too great this morning, all right? Because he’s sick. Because he’s very stupid and didn’t tell me when he _started_ getting sick.”

“You’re not helping.”

“Like when Amy at my daycare threw up on the teacher?”

“Um…sure.”

“Still not helping.”

“James, be quiet and go back to sleep. Anyway, I think it’s just going to be you and me today, all right? So we can let him rest?”

Brendan studies Michael, from the safety of James’s arm; James looks up at Michael too, and smiles, silently, through all the illness and exhaustion: _I love you_. Michael smiles back, though it’s more reminiscent of the expression of someone about to face an entire herd of dragons, and answers, _I know_.

“Okay,” Brendan decides. “Do you know how to make pancakes?”

“If you can put up with cereal,” Michael says, “you can have ice cream for lunch.”

To which James would object, except he’s been guilty of making similar bargains with his son, on occasion. And joining in, and enjoying, the outcome.

“Can I have a banana in it?”

“Sure.”

“And also chocolate chips?”

“Um…we’ll see.”

James wants to laugh, but his lungs are quite certain that that’d be a bad idea. Tempting anyway, though.

Michael kisses him, softly, on the forehead. “So I’m going to go feed your son cereal and a banana and chocolate chips, okay? And you’re going to go back to sleep, and still be alive when I come back to check on you?”

James nods, and doesn’t try to talk, partly because he’s afraid of the lurking cough and partly because for some inexplicable reason that kiss and those questions have brought the suggestion of  tears very close to the surface.

He smiles, though. And Michael smiles back, and gets up, and follows Brendan out the door, although even his shoulders radiate uncertainty regarding what he’s about to be in for. Michael has very expressive shoulders, James decides. Right now they’re trying hard to be determined, too.

He wants to remain awake and listen, to wistfully be a distant eavesdropper on the scene, but instead he just goes back to sleep, as instructed, and stays that way.

He wakes up the next time with the annoying fuzzy-headed feeling that means he’s slept longer than he meant to, at an odd time of day, and his internal clock is completely off. But, he realizes, after testing each limb beneath the blankets, he is, actually, feeling better. Aching everywhere, and drained of all but the smallest amount of energy, but more like himself, and not some hideous mucous-emitting monstrosity wrapped in bedclothes.

Even his hair hurts. He never would’ve guessed that one.

At least he can breathe again, though. Funny how much he’s never appreciated that ability before.

He lies there in bed enjoying the air and the dim solitude and the peacefulness, for a while. The shades are still closed and not much light is bothering to creep in, thoughtfully preserving the quiet on his behalf, and the pillow is nice and cool under his cheek.

Someone’s left him another bottle of water—he does remember Michael coming to check on him at one point, or maybe more than one point, he’s not quite sure—bringing him orange juice, and more medication, and the first bottles of water, and offering food, the mention of which had prompted James to hide under the blankets until Michael went away. He manages to sit up and drink half of the new water and then realizes that he _can_ sit up without wanting to collapse back into his protective blanket fortress again.

Definitely better. He could maybe even get up and go find out how Michael’s been coping with the unexpected babysitting duties of the morning.

He glances at the clock. And then almost falls off the bed. That can’t be right. That would mean he’s been asleep all _day_.

Oh, god, he’s been asleep all day. And he’s left Michael watching Brendan, and of course he trusts Michael with everything but Michael hasn’t spent much time around kids, and Brendan is, well, _James’s_ son, which means he has too much energy for any one person to keep up with, let alone a person who doesn’t deal with children on a regular basis.

He doesn’t even know if Michael ever wants kids. They’ve never discussed the idea. But the odds are no doubt rather nonexistent after this, and, he abruptly realizes, there’s an even worse possibility: what if Michael has decided that all this is too much work and resents him, now? What if he stumbles out into the living room and Michael looks up and kisses him goodbye and doesn’t want to stay?

Suddenly all of his distant fantasies about a family with Michael, maybe, someday, a tiny person in those muscular arms and the two of them smiling at each other across baby food and children’s football leagues and years to come, dissolve and pop like soap bubbles in the air.

The disappearance hurts like a spear through his heart, even though it shouldn’t because up until thirty seconds ago James hadn’t even realized that he _had_ those fantasies.

Michael probably doesn’t have those fantasies. Certainly not now.

He’ll be lucky if Michael still wants to talk to him, let alone kiss him before leaving. Michael’s not going to want someone who comes with so many encumbrances, someone who will get sick and be needy and force him into being a parent when he’s not ready for that yet.

“Fuck,” James says, into the blankets, barely audible, and he doesn’t cough, which should make him happy, but it doesn’t.

Speaking of audible, or inaudible, things, he can’t actually hear anything going on, outside of the bedroom. No noises. No voices. No indications of a half-grown human hurricane in the flat at all.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and puts his feet on the floor and contemplates them for a minute and then, gingerly, stands up. That seems to work well enough, so he collects the topmost blanket, wonders briefly when they acquired a down-stuffed magenta monstrosity that resembles nothing so much as Magneto’s cape, decides that this must be Michael’s fault somehow, and then ventures out the door, defended by his makeshift armor.

He follows the ominous quiet, step by careful step, down the hallway. Michael’s likely going to hate him. Hell, Brendan’s likely going to hate him, too. Though probably not as much as he hates his own weakness, at the moment.

The clean white walls of the hall, empty of anything including sympathy, refuse to comment on his parenting, or partnering, skills. He holds onto his ugly blanket, which coils itself around his shoulders as if that’s going to help, and peeks around the corner.

And then finds himself leaning against the closest suddenly-supportive wall out of sheer astonishment. Has to look again, to make sure. No, still wonderful.

Both Michael and Brendan are stretched out across the living-room carpet, in unconsciously similar poses that take up every available inch of floor space, and they’re surrounded by a disaster of crayons and paper, and very intently drawing something, or more accurately Brendan is drawing something and occasionally demanding that Michael contribute, which at the moment seems to mean coloring in the sky with a blue crayon. They both look perfectly happy and utterly content and like everything James has wanted, ever, in his life.

He stands there wrapped up in his blanket and forgets that he’s still sick and doesn’t take another step or speak because he’s afraid they’ll realize he’s there, and he wants to keep watching them as long as he possibly can.

He’s pretty sure even his heart is smiling. He can feel it.

He must’ve made some sound, though, or maybe Michael just has superhuman senses, because those wintergreen eyes glance up, and go wide and startled when they spot him, and in one impressive movement Michael ends up on his feet right in front of James, in the hallway.

“What are you doing up? You should be in bed! Or—did you need something? What can  I—?”

“I’m okay. Feeling better, actually. Well, mobile, anyway—” At which point a small affectionate whirlwind hits him in the legs. He’s expecting the impact, but still almost falls over; Michael says, “Hey,” and puts one arm around James and one hand on Brendan’s head. “What did I tell you about being gentle, when we checked on him?”

James opens his mouth in unspoken protest, unsure whether to be insulted or just impressed by the fact that his son immediately says “Sorry!” and hugs his leg much more cautiously.

“What have you done with my offspring?”

“He’s a nice kid,” Michael says, and James rolls his eyes. “What did he talk you into buying for him? Do I need to be worried about my credit card? And what _have_ you two been doing, all day?”

“We—”

“We watched the X-Men!”

“The animated series! I didn’t let him watch us!”

“—and then I got to sit on a motorcycle! But it didn’t go anywhere because that’s dangerous!”

“Right, and—”

“Dad,” Brendan says, wide-eyed, “did you know he has a motorcycle and he rode it to France?”

“ _In_ France. We decided only magical motorcycles could go across water, remember?”

“And we ate all the gummi bears!”

“Oh, you did?” James looks at Michael, who now has a distinctly guilty expression, and smothers a laugh beneath the corner of his blanket. “So you’re not going to want dinner, then.”

“I still want dinner!”

“Of course you do. And, yes, I did know about the motorcycle. He got in trouble for that, as I recall, because he wasn’t supposed to take it to France…”

“You did?” Apparently mention of trouble only causes more hero-worship.

“I did,” Michael agrees, solemnly. “Which is one reason we’re waiting until you’re a lot older before you get a motorcycle, okay? Also, didn’t you have something for your dad?”

“We drew you a picture!”

“Oh…thank you. It’s very colorful. Is that…that’s us, right? On a motorcycle?”

“You’re the short one,” Michael says helpfully.

“Thanks for that.”

“I love you.”

“You, too.”

“It’s a flying motorcycle,” Brendan points out. “See all the clouds?”

“I do, yes. They’re extremely fluffy clouds.”

“Now I’m drawing a tyrannosaurus rex,” Brendan says, and heads back to his spot on the carpet, unconcernedly.

James stares at the drawing—all _three_ of them, on a very brightly-colored motorcycle in the clouds—and wants to laugh, and cry, and hug both Michael and his son forever.

All the overwhelming emotions conspire to make him wobble a bit on his feet, and Michael’s arm tightens around his shoulders protectively. “I knew you shouldn’t be up. Come on, back to bed…”

“No, it’s not that, I’m fine, I just—you’re incredible. Honestly. What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“I could show you,” Michael says, “but I think that might have to wait until you’re healthy again,” and James smiles, leans into the solid support of that warm arm, and offers, “I’d kiss you, but I don’t think you want that right now, considering.”

Michael pretends to think about that for a second, and then shrugs, and leans down to brush their lips together anyway. “I still love you even when you’re disgustingly sick, you know.”

At which point Brendan, from the floor, says, “The tyrannosaurus wants pizza,” and James does laugh, this time.

“Even after all the gummi bears?...Fine, then. Get whatever you two want; I’m not that hungry, yet.”

“You don’t want anything? You should probably eat something.”

“Um…I can just make tea.”

“You mean I can make you tea.” They meander into the kitchen together; James leans against the table, which doesn’t mind taking some of his weight, and watches Michael locate his phone and order something horribly unhealthy with extra pepperoni and olives on it, and catches himself smiling, at the way Michael tips his head when he talks, at the gleeful little expression when he’s contemplating breadsticks.

“What?”

“Oh…nothing. You’re fantastic. I think I have enough cash for this, if you want, when they get here.”

“As if I’m letting you pay for things,” Michael says, and starts getting out a mug and heating up water for tea, and James shakes his head and says, “Please marry me,” and the second the words collide with the air he knows they’re real.

Michael doesn’t move, for a single frozen second. Then sets the mug down, very carefully, on the counter, with a precise clink. Turns around. Takes a deep breath, and meets James’s eyes with his own. “Yes?”

“…yes? I mean…really? Yes?”

“Um. Yes. If you—you did mean that, right?”

“Yes!”

“Then…yes. Really yes.”

“Oh, my god,” James says, “you said yes,” and Michael starts laughing.

“I think I’ve said yes at least four times now, so, yes, absolutely, I love you, does that help?”

“I don’t know, I might be delusional or something, I think you should say it again…”

“James,” Michael says, still laughing, and walks the few steps across the kitchen and tugs James away from the table and into his arms, “yes always. As many times as you want, okay? And also, for the record, I was thinking about asking you, I’ve _been_ thinking about it, especially after you made me go shopping for all the sheets, last week. I wasn’t expecting it to happen, you know, _immediately_ , but I was wondering whether you would ever want to…”

“Oh yes. I do want to. I want you. Can I kiss you now?”

“Of course—oh, wait, hang on.”

“What?” He watches Michael step out into the living room, where Brendan’s been ignoring all the adult conversations in favor of crayon-colored dinosaurs. Finds himself holding his breath, as Michael sits down next to his son, very earnestly.

Brendan looks up. “This one’s a stegosaurus.”

“I see that,” Michael agrees. “He has a very pointy tail. I need to ask you something, though, and it’s important, all right?”

“ ’kay.”

“We had fun today, right?”

“Yep.”

“Would you mind if—what would you think if I wanted to be here all the time, and live with your dad? Because your dad asked me to marry him, and that’s a big decision, so I thought I should ask you first. Do you think we could be a family?”

The entire cozy world, the crayons, the scattered paper, the forgotten mug of tea on the counter, tense in their places, all eager and expectant, leaning in and listening to the echoes of that question.

Brendan thinks about the idea for a minute, during which the universe waits. And then says, definitively, “You like gummi bears,” and goes back to adding spikes to the stegosaurus’s tail.

Michael, still on the floor, looks up at James, helplessly; James offers, “I think that’s a yes,” and then can’t keep from laughing, finally, at the pointy stegosaurus, at Michael’s expression, at the complete and utter giddy perfection of the world.

And then, of course, he starts coughing again and has to grab the table for support.

“F—oh, sorry—James!”

“I’m fine, I’m fine…so we’re having a gummi-bear-themed wedding, you realize…”

“Sit down, at least.” Michael pushes him into a chair, brings over the mostly-cool tea, and then doesn’t let go, after James tries to take it from him. Those changeable eyes are caught between excitement and worry, now; and James sighs and laces his fingers through the familiar long ones, resting against his own.

“Really fine. Just out of breath. But better, I promise. So we’re seriously getting married, aren’t we?”

“I did just ask your son for permission. And I think I got it, so, yes, we are.”

“In sickness and in health, and all that,” James says, and grins, and watches Michael grin back, the worry brilliantly vanquished by returning elation.

And, still grinning, Michael squeezes his hands, around the mug of tea, and answers, one more time, “Yes.”


End file.
